War God (53 page)

Less than a mile away across the fields lay the town of Mutul, consisting for the most part of simple huts clustered round a towering stone pyramid with stepped sides, far larger than the pyramid of Cozumel. At the edges of the town Sandoval spied green patches that he took to be vegetable gardens, and an orchard planted with regular lines of tall, leafy trees. What most pressed upon his mind, however, was the great mass of people boiling from every quarter like ants out of a disturbed nest and, much nearer, at a distance of seven hundred paces, a disciplined force of about two hundred heavily armed warriors clad in loincloths and skins, arrayed in four ranks of fifty, and rapidly closing on the Spanish column.

‘Orders, sir?’ said Brabo. His voice was terse.

Sandoval was still haunted by guilt at the torture he’d witnessed and failed to stop, but at least the spies had spoken true and he’d had time to think through a strategy in the last mile of the march. His men were few in numbers, but the sheer shocking strangeness of their appearance, their armour, their dogs and their science of warfare offered powerful advantages over the Indians.

There were five archers in the squad and their Genoese crossbows were lethal killing machines. They had an effective range up to four hundred paces against unarmoured foes and, even at two hundred paces, the steel bolts they fired could penetrate plate armour. Sandoval also had five musketeers, armed with Spanish-made arquebuses that fired lead balls about the diameter of a man’s thumb. These travelled much faster than crossbow bolts and often shattered on impact causing devastating wounds, but they were rarely effective at ranges beyond a hundred paces.

As to reloading, the muskets with their powder and ramrods and smouldering matchlocks, and the crossbows with their crannequins and windlasses to rewind the tough strings were equally cumbersome – both types of weapon requiring about a minute between shots. The great advantage of the muskets today, however, would come from the thunder and smoke of their firing. Since there had been no landing and no fighting when Córdoba’s fleet had recced Laguna Yalahau, it was safe to assume the inhabitants of Mutul had never faced guns and most probably never even heard rumour of such weapons. With luck the effects would be spectacular.

‘Crossbowmen and musketeers to the fore to form the first two ranks of the square,’ Sandoval barked. ‘Dogs and handlers stand to the side. Crossbowmen fire at two hundred paces, countermarch to the rear of the square and reload, musketeers fire at a hundred paces and countermarch to the rear. Then release the dogs.’

As they charged closer, the enemy began to shout war cries in their singsong language and to whistle and whoop in an eerie and disconcerting manner. When they were three hundred paces out, still beyond the effective range of the muskets, they deployed a weapon Sandoval was unfamiliar with – angled wooden sticks used to launch a hail of little spears that arched up into the sky and swooped down with alarming accuracy on the Spanish square. Reacting instinctively, the men in the rear three ranks raised their bucklers and big adarga shields to protect both themselves and the ranks in front. The barrage of darts, tipped with flint points, was easily deflected. Three of the dogs in the baying pack to the right of the square took direct hits, but their steel armour shattered the flint warheads leaving the hounds themselves unharmed. Then –
click
…
whoosh
– the crossbowmen let fly, and five of the onrushing enemy tumbled screaming to the ground, transfixed by the heavy steel bolts. As the crossbowmen stepped back through the square, a manoeuvre they had practised a hundred times, the musketeers fired a single massive, crashing volley into the heart of the enemy, now less than a hundred paces distant, and quite suddenly, through the thick clouds of foul smoke, Sandoval saw what he had been silently praying for, saw the Maya horde falter and stumble, saw the fear on their faces and their rolling eyes, heard their howls of terror.

On a European battlefield the toll taken by the guns would have been confined to those actually hit, and the charge would have continued unbroken, but here amongst savages who had never encountered firearms before, the effect was devastating beyond all proportion, almost as though the Spanish were not mortal men but gods throwing thunderbolts. The enemy front ranks instantly turned and ran, while the ranks behind, still carried forward by their own momentum, crashed into them in a jumbled, churning, panic-stricken scrum, upon which, snarling and baying, teeth snapping, armour gleaming, like demons released from hell, pounced the ten furious war dogs. Here a man’s throat was torn out, there the great artery in another’s thigh gushed blood, here a coil of guts spilled loose, there a wolfhound clamped a face in its massive jaws. Few of the Maya even tried to fight back against the onslaught, and those who did found their puny stone weapons unable to pierce the animals’ armour.

Sandoval watched awestruck for a moment as the huge beasts ravaged the enemy, spreading chaos and terror, then Brabo whispered in his ear, ‘Order the advance, sir.’

‘We can’t watch him all the time,’ said Pepillo. ‘You have your duties, I have mine, but Muñoz is free to move around as he pleases.’

‘I followed him last night,’ Melchior admitted suddenly.

‘You followed him? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘You were working with Cortés; the chance came and I took it.’

‘Chance! Suppose he’d caught you? Are you mad?’

Melchior had a strange, sad look on his face. ‘No. Not mad. I wanted to stop him … doing what he does. But he gave me the slip and sure enough he killed again.’

It was the afternoon of Saturday 27 February, and they were in the paddock where the expedition’s eighteen precious cavalry mounts were penned. In the past two days, shaking off the stiffness and jitters that had afflicted them after the storm and the long journey from Cuba, the horses had thrived on the pastures of rich wild grass that grew plentifully around the foot of the low hill on which the town of Cozumel stood.

Melchior was an accomplished rider and spent several hours in the paddock every day, grooming and exercising Molinero, Cortés’s dark chestnut stallion. This afternoon other manservants were also present doing the same work with Puertocarerro’s silver-grey mare, Alvarado’s white stallion Bucephalus, Escalante’s light chestnut gelding with its three white feet, and Cristóbal de Olid’s sorrel mare.

Pepillo watched Melchior as he patiently brushed Molinero’s flank and realised he didn’t fully understand the depth of the older boy’s hatred for Muñoz. Of course the friar was evil! Of course he should be stopped before he murdered any more Indian children! But were he and Melchior the ones to do it, and what had driven his friend to take the awful risk of going after the friar alone? Even together, what chance did they really stand?

‘The only mercy,’ Melchior said after a long silence, ‘is he’s not going to find it easy to catch another child. There’s uproar in the town after last night’s murder, and the Indians are beginning to lose their fear of us.’

Pepillo thought about this while he held his hand under Molinero’s whiskery lips and felt the horse’s hot breath as he nuzzled him. He very much wanted to learn to ride and constantly pestered Melchior to allow him to climb up on the big animal’s back, so far without success. ‘Muñoz won’t stop,’ he said eventually. ‘I saw what was in his eyes when he was beating me and I don’t believe he’ll ever stop.’

‘You’re right,’ said Melchior with a fierce grimace, ‘but he’s not going to risk a murder when the sun’s up like he did the first day. Tell you what. If Cortés has nothing for us tonight we’ll sneak out and watch the
San Sebastián
. If Muñoz comes to shore we’ll follow him.’

Pepillo’s heart sank. Every instinct screamed this was a bad plan that could get them both into terrible trouble and possibly even dead. But he had to support his friend, didn’t he? And he didn’t want to seem a coward, so he nodded bravely and said yes.

As Sandoval broke into a run he heard himself yelling at the top of his voice ‘Santiago and at them! Santiago and at them!’

Behind him, with a clank of armour and the rasp of steel as weapons were drawn, the square of twenty-five seasoned veterans surged forward, every man echoing the rousing war cry with which Spaniards had gone into battle for a thousand years. They fell mercilessly upon the disordered mass of the Maya, some retreating, some still attempting to advance, cutting them to pieces with swords and battle-axes, impaling them on pikes, clubbing them down with spiked maces and iron flails.

In the thick of it, Sandoval found himself face to face with a bellowing wild-eyed savage, dressed only in a loincloth, wielding a long wooden sword with thin flakes of some black stone set into its edges, and clearly ready to fight rather than run. The man was holding the weapon in a two-handed grip, slashing it madly through the air with tremendous power but no balance or style, so it was a simple matter for Sandoval to parry and deflect, slide his right foot forward as he had been taught, drive the point of his broadsword into the warrior’s heart and withdraw. Again that pluck of innards on steel that he’d felt when he’d killed his first man less than ten days before, but this time there was no remorse – rather a sense of exultation – as his enemy crumpled at his feet in a spray of blood.

Brabo shouted, ‘Behind you!’, and Sandoval whirled into a massive blow from another wooden sword that smashed against his cuirass, shattering every one of the stone flakes along the edge of the weapon but doing him no damage at all. The new attacker was a lean, lank-haired Mayan youth whose eyes locked on his in frozen disbelief as Sandoval hacked him near in half in the riposte.

Moments later it was over and the last of the Mayan warriors were in full flight across the fields. The musketeers had reloaded and fired another volley after them and the baying dogs charged on towards the assembled townsfolk, who also turned and ran uttering wails of horror.

Don Pedro de Alvarado sat out on the navigation deck of the
San Sebastián
, a length of sailcloth rigged to give him shade from the afternoon sun, while Doctor La Peña examined his broken forearm, and set about rebinding the splints with bandages thickly coated in a mixture of egg whites, flour and pig fat that would harden in the next hours into a rigid cast.

Leaning on the rail surrounding the deck, supposedly waiting for La Peña’s ministrations to various health needs of their own, but really here to further their other, more clandestine purpose, were lantern-jawed Juan Escudero and his massively bearded ally Juan Velázquez de León, the two ringleaders of the clique loyal to Diego de Velázquez, the governor of Cuba. Their approach to Alvarado the day before had come while he was still hurt and angry, indeed it had come precisely
because
he was hurt and angry, and they knew nothing of his reconciliation with Cortés this morning.

La Peña was also of the Velazquista persuasion, hence the plotters’ willingness to speak in front of him. Indeed, after spending the first night of the voyage from Santiago sharing the brig with him, the kidnapped physician had clung to Escudero like shit to a shoe.
Repulsive little arse-licker
, thought Alvarado. The only saving grace was that the snivelling, deceitful, trouble-making doctor, whose outsized buttocks wobbled like jellies in his pantaloons as he busied himself preparing the bandages, was good at what he did. His skill with casts and poultices had undoubtedly speeded up the healing of Alvarado’s broken arm and that was a small mercy to be thankful for. ‘How long do you think now, La Peña? A week? Two …’

The doctor made insincere clucking noises – meant, presumably, to mimic concern. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s not yet ten days since your … err … accident. You’ll have to wear the cast for at least another month. Maybe longer.’

‘Another month! That’s damned inconvenient. I’m a fighting man.’

‘Indeed so, Don Pedro, and one whose prowess is legendary. But I should refrain from battle, if I were you, until that arm is fully healed …’

‘It’s my right arm does the fighting,’ Alvarado glowered.

‘And your left that holds the shield.’

‘I’ve gone into battle without a shield before …’

‘As you’ll have to again if battle is imminent,’ said La Peña. He glanced over the rail at the peaceful bay of Cozumel and added, ‘But that does not appear to be the case.’

Escudero sniffed loudly and wiped a drop of clear mucus from the end of his long nose. ‘We’ll not be fighting fellow Spaniards, that’s for sure.’

‘Oh,’ said Alvarado, ‘were we expecting to?’

‘All that nonsense about Pedrarias and a rival expedition to the New Lands,’ Escudero growled. ‘It’s obvious now that Cortés was lying …’

‘It was just a pretext to dupe us into leaving Santiago in an unholy rush without proper procedure,’ complained Velázquez de León, scratching his huge black beard.

‘Without the blessing of His Excellency the Governor,’ added Escudero. He turned to fix Alvarado with a fanatical glare. ‘You supported Cortés in that folly,’ he said, ‘and look what your loyalty to your so-called “friend” earned you. We all saw the shameful way he treated you over the matter of Cozumel. That’s why, despite our differences, we thought it right to approach you yesterday with our proposal. I hope we were not mistaken.’

‘Ah, yes, your proposal. But yesterday you beat about the bush somewhat, and I prefer straight talk – therefore tell me plainly what you want of me.’

Escudero paused to peer suspiciously around the deck and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Why that you join us, of course, to save the expedition …’

‘To make it legal again,’ added Velázquez de León, with an emphatic thump of his fist on the rail, ‘to bring it back under the jurisdiction of Don Diego de Velázquez …’

‘Your cousin,’ Alvarado noted.

‘Yes, my cousin.’ The tanned skin of the big man’s face turned beetroot red in the few areas where it was not covered by hair. ‘But also your patron for many years. Why, if my memory serves me right, he even advanced you the funds to purchase this great carrack of yours.’